currently active players with a shot at the hall of fame

I hedged a bit on Beltre because everybody else does, but honestly, I think he'll go in easily--maybe not first ballot, but first two or three.

There are the reasons cited above--his high (and getting higher) WAR rank, the possibility of 500/3,000 (should get the latter)--and I also get the feeling from what I've been reading the past couple of years, since Santo's induction, that there's a growing awareness of how badly 3B has been treated in the voting. (How badly Santo specifically was treated, going in posthumously, is part of that.) Too late to help Graig Nettles or Buddy Bell or Ron Cey, but I think it will help third basemen going forward. We'll see when Rolen comes around, although his path is tougher--he'll be plunked down in the middle of what will still be a glut, his case is more dependent on sabermetrics than Beltre's will be, and his career is more fragmented than Beltre's.

Rolen will also have the good luck to come onto the ballot the same year as Chipper.

I think C.C Sabathia will be the stick the next generation of pitchers will be compared to. Lesser stats than him is a sure out of the HOF, better is a sure in.

omfg @ you guys mentioning jose altuve and billy hamilton in a HOF thread

we've done this before, but

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/jaws_3B.shtml

Which reminds me that I like Longoria's chances.

completely forgot that i made this thread. wright's gone completely unmentioned since, was gonna say "funny what three terrible months can do" but apparently he's been good after the first month

altuve and hamilton were brought up to make a point

how about xander bogaerts, he could totally be a league average player someday

hall-of-fame name as a rookie tbh

Predicting HOF 3Bmen is a bit of a sucker's game. They've been overlooked and undervalued in every era, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

I don't see a big difference between Rolen and Beltre's careers (of course Beltre is still active and improving his chances), and Rolen's chances are almost nil right now, so I'm not sure why some of you think that Beltre is a near lock.

I think I'm closer to 'should be' than 'is'

I'm closer to "is," for the reasons above. What's the makeup of the electorate now? Maybe 2/3 old-school and 1/3 sabermetric? 3/4 vs. 1/4? Just guessing...I'm sure many, like a Verducci, fall somewhere between. Anyway, when Beltre's up 8 or 9 years down the road, I'm sure at worst it'll be 50-50. And he should have lots for both camps.

1) Sabermetrically, Beltre's ahead of Rolen in WAR by 4 games at the moment. When he finishes, he should be 10 ahead or more, unless he falls apart next season.

2) More traditionally--in "counting stats," if you prefer (I try to avoid that term...)--he's going to have a minimum of 400 HR, more likely closer to 450, and close to 3,000 hits; Rolen is at 316/2077. Beltre may even win a batting title this year. Whether you want it to or not, that stuff will matter to older voters.

Speculation, but I also think there's a growing awareness that 3B is under-represented, and some lingering embarrassment over the handling of Santo.

James adds one more factor (yes, I sent him a "Hey Bill" the other day): "Some of it is image. Rolen had battles with his managers in at least two cities, which tended to shape his image. Beltre, on the other hand, is an interesting, cheerful, person...oddly combining 'highly competitive' with 'friendly,' which not many people can do...and I think there is more understanding of the fact that he's a tremendous player, although I'm not really sure he is better than Rolen."

His words--no idea if that'll make a difference or not.

I think Rolen's general lack of health also part of his image.

Definitely. But Beltre has some baggage too -- before his season with Boston in '10, he was viewed as a guy who had one fluke year in '04 but was otherwise something of a failure (even though he wasn't) and a poor free agent signing for Seattle.

If he gets 3000 hits and 450 HR he's in, but it shouldn't be that simple. I think he'd have the lowest OBP of anyone with 3000 hits (currently .335, will likely be lower by the end of his career).

although it mainly appears driven by his AVG - his OBP has been improving as he's aged (or played in more hitter friendly parks)... whatever the cause, i would not be shocked if his career OBP on retirement wound up above where it is now.

I took a look at Fangraphs--I always use Baseball Reference out of habit and preference--and they've got Rolen slightly ahead in WAR by a game or two. Another thing that could figure into this would be where Beltre ends up if he gets moved.

i think w/WAR becoming more of an imprimatur of how productive a player has been, i'm pretty confident about beltre's chances. even in seattle he put up 21.3* WAR in 4 2/3 seasons. and as far as where he might be moved, he's done great at home since he arrived in texas but he's been good on the road too. i could see him possibly getting up to 85-90 WAR total before it's all said and done and if he doesn't get in right away i would have to imagine he'd get in one way or another eventually.

*BBR

he was good in seattle, it's just really hard to look good in seattle

feel like his defense rep has risen recently from "great" to "(one of the or maybe the) best alive"? which is the type of thing that can happen with a hitting surge. only won 4 GGs but i think he's now considered more highly than rolen was

ripken called him the best 3b ever which turned a huge amount of O's fans into gigantic babies re: brooks

Dave Fleming argues that it's catchers, even more than third basemen, who get shortchanged in HOF voting:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/where_are_the_great_catchers_/

absolutely true

first off, the writer commits a really common statistical blunder when he says mauer's candidacy is already extremely strong due to the fact that his WAR/162 is the highest of any catcher in baseball history. mauer's numbers look better compared to bench -- a far superior player -- because we're only looking at mauer's twenties and haven't given him time to decline (which he's already doing) and lower that number.

to the point that catchers are historically underappreciated, it may very well be true that WAR fails to account for the difficulty of playing the position, pitch framing, etc; obviously this is a popular view among mainstream sabermetricians. if this is the case, then it's difficult to compare them to other position players using WAR. but leaving that aside, or even assuming that WAR could be tweaked somehow to account for this, there's no way you can adjust WAR for the fact that catchers, on average, play three-quarters of a season. they're not providing value during that time they're resting, and they're not providing value when their careers end sooner than other players. if you want to make this a hall of fame argument, you could argue for lowering the statistical threshold to account for the difficulties of playing catcher, but this has nothing to do with WAR itself

also when the author says "Is it rational, then, that a strong candidate for the title of greatest catcher of all-time has a per-162 game rate that’s so far below the best players at every other position on the diamond? Is it rational to believe that there have been no really great catchers in major league history?" -- i think there might be a failure to account for a sort of selection bias that undoubtedly occurs when clubs decide which position players will play. great-hitting young catchers are routinely moved from behind the plate at a young age because teams want to maximize the value they can contribute. it happened with biggio; it would have happened earlier with mauer, had the twins had their way; it's happened with countless other young catchers: teams want their best young hitters in the lineup every day and to not age in dog years. it's very possible that the talent pool of major league catchers is diluted because of this

i know we've argued this before but anyway the biggest contributing factor to keeping catcher WAR (and other counting stats) low is short careers. we're only judging mauer on his 20s because that's basically his career, and it's still enough to put him 18 all-time in WAR. so either you believe that each position should be treated with some equality in HOF voting and a generally similar amount of each should go in, or you don't. i believe that should be the way and that if mauer retired tomorrow he'd deserve to get in. and probably less 1Bs and corner OFs should get in but that's a different thing.

you're talking about WAR, but the author was talking about WAR/162. the latter theoretically should have nothing to do with longevity; in fact shorter careers would be rewarded. that's precisely why mauer looks so good compared to the other catchers he mentioned, when bench was actually a far superior player. through bench's age 30 season he had 63.8 WAR, and 6.33 WAR/162 to mauer's 5.74

if the selection bias i'm talking about is a real thing then there's no reason to believe catchers should be represented as equally as other position players. if someone ever wondered where the all-time great relief pitchers were, you'd tell them that the best pitchers were made to be starters. it's possible a similar phenomenon occurs with catchers, but maybe to a lesser extent.

do you have to be a member to comment on that site?

if the selection bias i'm talking about is a real thing then there's no reason to believe catchers should be represented as equally as other position players.

there is... if you believe there is? this is literally nothing but a preference. the best catchers should get in, regardless of how they stack up against every other position. that's my preference. i don't know how selection bias or really anything else plays into that at all. the author of the article using shitty arguments doesn't really change that.

relief pitchers are a different monster, they accumulate like several standard deviations less value than hitters and there is much less of a reason to separate them from starters. that is not at all comparable to catchers. i don't understand why you're bringing up biggio to make this point when he collected the majority of his WAR from 2B. he was barely a catcher -- so what? why does that change how we view the guys that move from catcher? how is this any different from all the guys who move from SS to 3B/2B or from CF to LF/RF? (one thing you're forgetting is that a lot of guys get moved from C/SS/CF because they're not good there -- talented hitters always try to occupy these spots in high school and college to increase their value on draft day and even though they suck there, teams still wait too long to move them)

and anyway if you're the type of person who thinks mo should be kept out of the HOF bc he's a reliever you might be taking the baseball hall of fame a bit too seriously and i suggest you maybe step outside and take a breather

why does that change how we view the guys that move from catcher

*the guys that don't move from catcher

(xposts) I don't know--appears you haven't posted anything, so maybe you do. Your counter-arguments are good, Kevin; I'm a subscriber, so if you want, I'd be glad to cut-and-paste them in there for you.

idgi, good hitters move from catcher because catcher is a difficult, dangerous position with a short lifespan because it requires much more physical endurance than every other position, why shouldn't the guys that are best at that get in proportionally to other positions

i played catcher once in little league and my legs still hurt

i played catcher for a year in little league and was once pulled aside by an umpire who had to tell me that i couldn't take my mask off before the pitcher had thrown. everyone stole off of me because i didn't have a strong arm, and the catcher's mask was several sizes too big and rattled around a bunch on my head, so i wanted to take it off so i could make an unencumbered throw to 2B for once.

idgi, good hitters move from catcher because catcher is a difficult, dangerous position with a short lifespan because it requires much more physical endurance than every other position, why shouldn't the guys that are best at that get in proportionally to other positions

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Tuesday, July 22, 2014 3:59 PM (11 minutes ago)

because they aren't actually the best players, they're the best players compared to other catchers. think of the relief pitcher analogy again

I caught too, up till I was 10 or 11. When we were in Florida one year, I got Johnny Bench's autograph and had him sign my catcher's mitt. That was a bright idea--continued to use the glove, autograph faded away.

thanks, clem, could you post this:

the writer commits a really common statistical blunder when he says mauer's candidacy is already extremely strong due to the fact that his WAR/162 is the highest of any catcher in baseball history. mauer's numbers look better compared to bench -- a far superior player: bench's WAR/162 through his age 30 season was 6.33, and this number is actually "hurt" by the fact that he stayed on the field more and therefore had a bigger denominator -- because we're only looking at mauer's twenties and haven't given him time to decline (which he's already doing) and lower that number. i'm sure this was considered, but it wasn't mentioned.

to the point that catchers are historically underappreciated, it may very well be true that WAR fails to account for the difficulty of playing the position, pitch framing, etc; obviously this is a popular view among mainstream sabermetricians. if this is the case, then it's difficult to compare them to other position players using WAR. but leaving that aside, or even assuming that WAR could be tweaked somehow to account for this, there's no way you can adjust WAR for the fact that catchers, on average, play three-quarters of a season. they're not providing value during that time they're resting, and they're not providing value when their careers end sooner than other players. if you want to make this a hall of fame argument, you could argue for lowering the statistical threshold to account for the difficulties of playing catcher, but this has nothing to do with WAR itself

also when the author says "Is it rational, then, that a strong candidate for the title of greatest catcher of all-time has a per-162 game rate that’s so far below the best players at every other position on the diamond? Is it rational to believe that there have been no really great catchers in major league history?" -- i think there might be a failure to account for a sort of selection bias that undoubtedly occurs when clubs decide which position players will play. great-hitting young catchers are routinely moved from behind the plate at a young age because teams want to maximize the value they can contribute. it happened with biggio; it would have happened earlier with mauer, had the twins had their way; it's happened with countless other young catchers: teams want their best young hitters in the lineup every day and to not age in dog years. it's very possible that the talent pool of major league catchers is diluted because of this. a somewhat analogous situation is relief pitchers: the reason relief pitchers in general are lesser pitchers than starters is that managers and front-office people have their best pitchers start games, because that's how they can pitch the most innings and give them the most value. relievers shouldn't -- note shouldn't -- be compared against other relievers, but against other players. but this gets into a long tangent about how JAWS is dumb and how it de-accounts for position, one of the fundamental strengths of WAR

and i explained why that's a bad analogy! the best relief pitcher of all time still has less WAR than joe mauer, and relief pitchers are required to do much less -- contribute much less per season than catchers, master fewer pitches (sometimes only one) -- rather than much more, like what catchers do (destroy lower body). starters move to relief because it's easier to be good in relief. non-catchers do not move to catcher for any reason.

i don't understand why you're bringing up biggio to make this point when he collected the majority of his WAR from 2B. he was barely a catcher -- so what? why does that change how we view the guys that move from catcher? how is this any different from all the guys who move from SS to 3B/2B or from CF to LF/RF? (one thing you're forgetting is that a lot of guys get moved from C/SS/CF because they're not good there -- talented hitters always try to occupy these spots in high school and college to increase their value on draft day and even though they suck there, teams still wait too long to move them)

"selection bias" just means the sample being studied differs systematically from the population at whole. applied to this case, i'm arguing -- with not a whole lot of evidence, i admit, but biggio is an example and he's not alone -- that catchers as a group are lesser players than baseball players as a group, because managers/team builders may be given to moving the best young catchers out of that position to maximize their longevity and production. biggio is the archetype because he's a guy who came up as a catcher but was moved almost immediately after making the majors. had he remained a catcher, he may have gone down as one of the best catchers ever. if this is part of a trend -- and again i'm not providing evidence that it is, just speculating -- then that would explain why the catchers who do stay being catchers are as a group lesser players, and why their being underrepresented among the elite of the elite might be justified.

i totally believe rivera should be a hall of famer btw

i was only using the relievers analogy to illustrate what i meant by the catcher selection bias, i understand it's a different situation.

so catchers are worse than baseball hitters as a whole because a lot of players move from catcher which creates a much smaller sample of catchers to choose from

this is sort of a slippery slope of an argument here

(and why doesn't it extend to shortstops and center fielders?)

shortstops and center fielders are on average worse hitters than baseball players as a whole. this is part of why they get such a nice positional adjustment in WAR. but i'd argue that shortstops and center fielders are generally the best athletes and have a much better pool to choose from than catchers

i mean to use the little league analogy everyone knows the fat kid was the catcher

i mean to take this to a ridiculous extreme you could say the entire population of MLB players is diluted because if there was much more high school/college scouting, if teenagers in podunk montana towns were getting scouted and drafted and given the best coaching in the world, a huge majority of current hall of famers would not be good enough for the hypothetical hall of fame

if cuban players didn't have to risk their lives to become american major leaguers the pool would be bigger too

if every human being on earth played baseball from little league to adulthood and they all qualified for the rule 4 draft maybe it'd only be babe ruth and ted williams

if every player on strds in the 90s kept their strd usage a secret larry walker wouldn't stand a chance

hypotheticals don't make thurman munson any less awesome

eh those aren't valid counters, they're all external to the sample of current major leaguers. what i'm saying is that baseball talent is unevenly distributed among the positions

shortstops and center fielders are on average worse hitters than baseball players as a whole. this is part of why they get such a nice positional adjustment in WAR. but i'd argue that shortstops and center fielders are generally the best athletes and have a much better pool to choose from than catchers

― k3vin k., Tuesday, July 22, 2014 4:44 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean to use the little league analogy everyone knows the fat kid was the catcher

― k3vin k., Tuesday, July 22, 2014 4:45 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is silly and wrong

i'll never understand why being able to hit a baseball good and/or crouching on your knees for 9 innings 5-6 days a wk is considered less "athletic" than running fast and being thin, especially when a lot of SS/CF perceived "athletic" value comes from actually being smart, quick to respond and able to execute -- skills also required for catching. or why this athleticism, if catchers really lack it, should be valued more than the ability to withstand everything catchers withstand.

a lot of SSs and CFs suck at SS and CF but every catcher has to be able to withstand being a catcher

eh those aren't valid counters, they're all external to the sample of current major leaguers. what i'm saying is that baseball talent is unevenly distributed among the positions

― k3vin k., Tuesday, July 22, 2014 4:52 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man people are always dinging old timers for not having to play against non-wites and that's E2TS (external to the sample, new lingo)

it's just really silly to me to hold a potential sample pool against an actual sample pool

yeah i mean this is all splitting hairs at a certain point but when a dude writes a (pretty good actually) article asking why catchers aren't represented among the game's greats, a reasonable response would be to point out that maybe the best players just don't play catcher

It's ok, catchers get to be in HOF as great managers.

I think this paragraph nails it: Does Mauer have to pad his career with numbers tallied at first base for us to appreciate this, or can we appreciate the genius of his career now? If we can appreciate the short-but-brilliant careers of Sandy Koufax or Kirby Puckett, why can’t we do the same for Joe Mauer? If we cut Koufax and Puckett slack for arm injuries and vision problems, why isn’t the same leniency granted to major league catchers?

I realize this is not a paragraph. I'm sorry I called this a paragraph.

anything can be a paragraph if you believe in yourself

mauer's been in the top 10 in WAR once in his career. it's not like he'd be a no-brainer if he retired tomorrow